Can HFC be NBN Co's saviour?

NBN Co boss Bill Morrow's decision to create a separate HFC division was always on the cards. And, as far as connecting Australians to the National Broadband Network (NBN) is concerned, the move can't come soon enough.

While hiving off the hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) network as a separate unit can be interpreted as the first step in a very long journey of splitting up NBN Co, Bill Morrow and his team and have more pressing concerns at the moment.

You have to build the NBN first before you can start thinking about ripping it apart.

The recruitment in July of Dennis Steiger, who brings substantial experience in the HFC space, was an early indication of the sort of role he was destined to play in the new NBN Co regime.

Steiger spent 10 years at Canada's Shaw Communications, a company that predominantly relies on HFC cable infrastructure for service delivery.

With Greg Adcock calling the shots on the fibre-to-the-node build, Steiger can put his cable expertise to good use on the HFC networks, which NBN Co is set to pick up from Telstra and Optus.

NBN Co won't get its hands on the infrastructure until early next year, but that doesn't mean that the company can't deploy resources to ensure that it can use the HFC footprint to boost the numbers of premises connected to the NBN.

If all goes to plan, NBN Co could be in the running to get three million premises connected by November 2015.

Behind the scenes, NBN Co is already putting its foot down to get the HFC engine running as quickly as possible.

The company should have the cable modem termination system kits tender sorted in the next couple of weeks, with either Cisco Systems or Arris Systems set to get the nod.

Once the kits are obtained, Steiger and his team will have to ensure that they are ready to go while the deals are hammered out between NBN Co and Optus. It is understood that rather than decommissioning the entire Optus HFC network parts of it will be put to use in the multi-technology-mix.

If NBN Co is able to drop those CMTS to even 80 per cent of the 121 Point of Interconnect, then access to three million or so homes is unlocked.

As the fibre-to-the-premises rollout edges towards a standstill and the FTTN build slowly starts picking up pace, the HFC footprint could potentially deliver the good news that NBN Co's major shareholder would no doubt like to hear by this time next year.

However, it won't be a walk in the park. Steiger and his team will have to ensure that the networks that they inherit from Telstra and Optus are in a position to handle the strain once they are part of the NBN and customers start getting connected.

There's a lot of scaling and modeling that will be required to put together the design rules for HFC, and then there's the physical state of the networks and filling in the black spots that need to be taken into account.

A list of the work required is articulated here by NBN Co director Simon Hackett, who has maintained that those covered by the HFC footprint won't be left with the same old service rebadged as NBN. Instead, NBN Co will invest in network upgrades and capacity expansions “to deliver high performance, low contention-ratio 100 megabit downstream rates.”

“The intended HFC upgrades will allow NBN Co to deliver high speed (30-40 megabit per second) upstream data rates in the HFC network – a dramatic contrast to typical 1-2 megabit upstream data rates in retail HFC services today,” Hackett says.

So a souped-up HFC for NBN 2.0 and the work on it is about begin in earnest. While NBN Co's FTTN trials, its headaches with FTTP trials and its stoush with TPG Telecom have garnered a lot of attention, the HFC component of the NBN has been rather inconspicuous.

But word from the inside suggests a newfound impetus within NBN Co to get the HFC side of things moving as quickly as possible.

Given the role it can play in accelerating the footprint of the NBN the promise of about 3.4 million premises on the network is exactly the sort of motivation Steiger and his team need.